MEANJIN BACK ISSUE

Biography
Vol 61, no. 1, 2002



This issue draws for many of its items on papers delivered at the highly popular conference organised by the National Library of Australia in October 2001 and entitled 'The Secret Self: Exploring Biography and Autobiography'. The published program of the conference spelt out its abiding concerns as follows:

How much does the autobiographer reveal? What, if anything, is off-limits to the biographical enterprise? Where do the boundaries between fiction, biography and autobiography lie? The conference examines the public lives of politicians, the private lives of families, the power of self-revelation, and the politics of writing a life.

The introductory address at this conference was written by the General Editor of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, John Ritchie, and is here published under the title, 'Getting A Life'. All of the keynote addresses are also republished here: Neal Blewett, former Labor Health Minister, on the spate of memoirs and autobiographies produced by the members of the Hawke and Keating Cabinets in the 1980s and early 1990s; Michael King on his manoeuvres in writing the life of the famously private New Zealand novelist, Janet Frame; Nadia Wheatley on how she came to write the biography of the alluring expatriate novelist and journalist, Charmian Clift. Christina Hill provides a companion review of the Clift biography.

Other writers address themselves to the lives of poets, prime ministers, footballers, explorers, war brides: a rich range. New light on the painter, Howard Arkley, is shed by an examination of his notebooks - previously unseen by scholars. There is a homage to V.S. Naipaul by a fellow-writer from the Indian diaspora. Tensions between the Brett sisters, Lily and Doris, are examined within the context of post-holocaust renderings of Jewish family life. Helen Garner probes the different personae writers adopt in their successive works; and actor, David Tredinnick probes the personae of David Malouf. as revealed - or concealed - in a recent 'celebration' of the novelist's work.

Four writers of varying ages and backgrounds provide deeply-felt memoirs of episodes from their own lives: Bernard Smith, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Carla Sari and Alice Pung. And Adelaide poet Jan Owen has written a diary of her days as artist in residence at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris.

Our new Cinema section continues with a joint review of two of the most successful Australian films of last year: Lantana and The Bank.

As always, the magazine also features samples of the best new poetry and short fiction by Australian (and some overseas) writers. In this issue, for example, there are stories by prizewinning authors Alex Miller and Lisa Merrifield and poems by Jill Jones, Louise Crisp, Ouyang Yu and Peter Rose. There is also a selection of fiction and verse from newly-emerging creative talents.